What I think of “Friends”
A couple of people asked in the comments and a couple of others have asked in real life so I’ll talk about it real quick. Well, it’s a sitcom and sitcoms screw everything up. I think about the brouhaha over Jamie’s infertility on “Mad About You” on the TTC boards, for example. Obviously, I have some real issues with it, especially that guilt-the-birth-mom scene where Chandler says, “She’s a mother without a baby.” I was tensely waiting for the next line to be something awful like, “And you have a baby without a mother” but I think it was something more innocuous.
I’ll tell you one thing though; it’s interesting to have open adoptions be part of mainstream media. That really shows you how far adoption has come. I mean, yes, they screwed it up but not as much as they might have if they had showed Monica and Chandler trotting off to an orphange and picking out the cutest baby. There’s this movie I really like called Penny Serenade, which was made in 1941 (starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne), which is about an infertile couple (she miscarries by falling down the stairs) who eventually adopt. I was hoping “Friends” wouldn’t go the Penny Serenade route where the baby is custom ordered, “With blue eyes and blond curls, please.” (By the way, lots is wrong with that movie politically correct-wise but I dearly love it. Check it out if you haven’t and bring a box of kleenex.) We really have come a long way although that doesn’t mean we couldn’t go further.
One other interesting thing about watching “Friends” is that Noah was downstairs playing while it was on. We were able to talk a bit about how it was different, what we were doing, but I think it went a ways to normalize the whole adoption thing for Noah. There it is on tv, just like stories about people getting babies the regular way. That was kind of cool, a latent consequence that I appreciated.
I don’t know if I’ll keep catching the storyline because I generally don’t watch television at 8pm. The only reason I caught it this week is that I was folding laundry. I’m really all about ER on Thursdays. Now that’s a storyline that catches my attention. But I cannot for the life of me see the chemistry between Luka and the nurse with the crazy kid.
This is unrelated– but I was at the yarn store today and apparently one of them employees adopted a baby two weeks ago. She was passing pictures around, and talking about how he was in perfect health “he’s such a good baby despite NO pre-natal care. Yeah, a lot of birth-moms don’t bother. And it’s a shame because it’s FREE. But they won’t get off their butts and go get it . . .”
I didn’t say anything. But I could tell she was curious as to why I wasn’t asking for the pictures or gushing. All I kept thinking was about your posts, and this birth-mom who is probably still in pain from the delivery, probably still engorged, and how the woman she was kind and brave enough to give her baby to is degrading her in public.
Interestingly, nurses think ER is so screwed up… LOL
Just goes to show, television…its all about entertainment… less to do about reality.
-d
I felt that it was a bit far fetched that the birth mother agreed to let Chandler and Monica adopt her child after they lied to her.
Neat that Noah reacted well to an adoption story on tv. Does he have any friends who are adopted, or is there an adoption family support type play group in your area you could take him to, to normalize it more?
Penny Serenade. Yeah, that was a movie where one part of me was analyzing how really dated a lot of the thought was, and wondered how it was perceived at the time, while something else about it really hooked me. (The little apartment above the newspaper office, with the little back roof-top yard.) Not a movie for a small kid, though, the way death is handled.
I think ER’s Luka has a dad-crush on the curious kid, the mom is just attached to the kid.
I saw that episode of Friends shortly after I stumbled across your site fir the first time (coincidentally the post where you talk about the guilting-the-birth-mother scenario), and couldn’t help but think about you while watching it. I watched it and my scalp prickled, my teeth gritted, and I was disgusted by their behavior–even though I knew it was just a script that was written–it so accurately reflects the mental/emotional maturity levels of some people.
Thanks for writing so candidly about things, and for promoting ethical behavior from adoptive parents. I think you’re amazing, wonderful, and one of the clearest-thinking people. You make casual stumblers-on think a bit more about things, about behaviors, and about responsibility.